


I think I should have loved you presently

by prettylittlegoat



Category: London Spy
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Naked Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5635507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettylittlegoat/pseuds/prettylittlegoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"'For now,' Alex agrees, and he says it like hallowed covenant, holy in that warm room. He reaches for Danny again, pulls his face close and kisses him gentle and deep until they’re both drunk on the slide of their tongues and the rasp of their chins together. They whisper those words together for hours in the breaks between the sweet slip of kissing."</p><p>two sweet boys who are both too shy to say they love the other</p>
            </blockquote>





	I think I should have loved you presently

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the edna st. vincent millay sonnet by the same name.  
> while i was working on my 00q series, o disctinct, today, i managed to watch all but the last episode of london spy. so naturally i quit working on the 00q and wrote this bit of fluff instead.  
> my tumblr is over at cabritabonita, and i dearly appreciate comments!

“You’re warm,” Alex says, hand resting gentle on Danny’s face. He smooths his thumb over the curve beneath his eye, rests it on that swell of bone. Danny grins, a soft-bright morning smile, fresh from sleep, and nods.

“You’ve made me blush.”

Alex takes pause at that, spends a minute just looking at this boy of a man - his partner. He looks at the young roundness of his face, still there under the scruff. He looks at the mole on his cheek and the subtle stick of baby curls to his forehead and the flicker of his eyes. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a tender softness at the corner of his eyes and at the lines of his mouth. “I didn’t mean to.”

Danny leans forward, eyes slipping shut, and settles an open-mouth kiss on those soft and bright lips. It’s hot and a little wet, and he grins into it as Alex’s mouth opens, shyly. Slowly, blush still streaking the jut of his cheekbones, he pulls back; grins. “It’s not a bad thing.”

He thinks of how he may have felt, perhaps two months ago, about laying with a man in a bed not-his-own and relishing the flush of squarely sloping shoulders and the smile-swell of cheeks. “I know that,” he says, and marvels again at the knowing of it.

They’re laying on their sides, looking into one another’s eyes. The room is subtly warm, and sunny with the morning. A blanket, well-loved and a touch lumpy, is tangled about their feet and ankles, but aside from it, they lay, golden-nude, in the morning sun. Danny’s blue-green eyes are crinkled a little, close to shut from the grin on his face, and Alex’s are wide and open and looking - as if to stare straight through to this boy’s sweet soul.

Alex lifts the hand pressed to Danny’s face, nails buffed smooth and cuticles perfect-round, unmarred. He moves as if to settle it there on that unruly mop of sleep-wild hair, but Danny catches it first. His thumb is steady on Alex’s pulse, and he moves those outstretched fingers to his lips. His lips, pale and a little rough-chapped, press onto the pad of each finger, the crease-bends on the back of each knuckle, the roundness of the base of that thumb.

“Even your hands are” - perfect, he thinks - “beautiful.” Alex lets out a little breath at that, a tiny little smile curving the corner of his mouth. Danny always watches for those; Alex’s smiles are a tender singularity, and he wishes he could keep them in jars for the gray of London autumns. He’s a little glad, though, for their rarity: it gives them a heart wrenching value.

“That isn’t what you were going to say.”

“No,” he agrees with a little flash of a smile, and offers no more.

Alex doesn’t replied, makes a little ‘mm’ and lets the other corner of his mouth twitch up as Danny resumes kissing his hand. He’s a little breathless with it, unused to feeling the kind of silent reverence being offered up here, and relishes the chaste blessing of it washing over himself. Despite himself, despite wanting to memorize this moment, wanting to quantify it in his mind, his eyes shift closed and he drinks in the feel of those lips on his skin.

After a while, Danny ceases that tenderhearted kissing, presses his face, soft, against Alex’s hand. Alex opens his eyes, searching for why Danny stopped. His eyes are closed, and he looks as if to cry, and Alex feels a shudder in his chest at that.

“Are you alright?” Alex asks, and the soft shadow of a smile is gone. He fears, quite suddenly, that he’s upset the snowy innocence of his partner.

“Yes,” Danny says, sincere, “yes, I’m fine.” He presses a fluttering kiss to the center of Alex’s palm, moves the hand to rest on his cheek. His eyes are bright with tears, but his mouth is spread and open in a private little smile. “I’m fine,” he says again. “I’ve just never felt this...” he gestures, a touch helplessly. “This needed. Like I’m worth something; like I _am_ something.”

“You’re everything,” Alex says, suddenly and without meaning to. He realizes, once he’s said the words and considered them, that he very much means them, and that takes the breath from him. “Oh, _oh_ ,” he says, and soft.

“Quite,” Danny agrees. He looks upon the face of his everything, all straight, sharp planes, and marvels at its difference from his own. He marvels at the straight slope of his nose against the soft roundness of his own, the short pink bow of his lips against the wide easiness of his own mouth.

Alex is a quiet touch uncomfortable with the tender perusal of his features, and, so, he leans forward and presses his lips to the corner of Danny’s mouth, and settles their foreheads together. His eyes are closed with their nearness, and he shudders out a little breath. “I’ve never,” he begins, breathes, but no more. His hand falls to gently grab at and let go of the rumpled and cloud-white sheets, as if he very unsure of himself in this moment.

“I know,” Danny says, and means it. “I know, I know.” He doesn’t, exactly; he doesn’t know what Alex has never, but he knows the rawness of the words, and knows it intimately, and has no better way to say it. “I know.”

Alex feels a tug in his heart at the purity and the innocence in that voice. He recognizes Danny’s unknowing in literal terms, but more acutely recognizes the abstract knowing. “Thank you,” he says, and they both fall silent for a time. Alex breathes in the smell of Danny, and the warm-hug feeling of the too-short bed, well-loved.

After a time, Danny begins to fidget. He leans to kiss Alex’s hand; he shifts his hand over the firm curve of his pectorals. “Can we - ” The words are a struggle for him, and his face flushes red again with how hard the words are for him. “Is this - is this forever?” Can we, he thinks while speaking, be in love?

Alex is silent. He leans back, looking at the rough and eager face of this boy - his boy, his mind notes absently - and at the tremble of him and at the floppy hair. “It’s for now,” he says finally, not wanting a lie, but wanting nothing to change.

And it’s enough for Danny, the tragic romantic he is. “For now, for now,” he breathes. The now all seems very forever: the warm of the sunup in that room, the dance of the dust motes, the tangle of their bodies, fitting together so rightly. It feels like it could never end, like he could remain in just this now forever.

“For now,” Alex agrees, and he says it like hallowed covenant, holy in that warm room. He reaches for Danny again, pulls his face close and kisses him gentle and deep until they’re both drunk on the slide of their tongues and the rasp of their chins together. They whisper those words together for hours in the breaks between the sweet slip of kissing.


End file.
